Happy Moments

Recently I asked one of my match mates on eharmony.com to name one of his happiest memories. We had made it to "step three" and I wanted to ask a question that hadn't been made up by a god-like computer database. It was a question I asked off the top of my head.

"What is your happiest memory?" asked Lana, my dating coach, when I told her the question I had posed.

"Well, obviously that would be wearing matching overalls to a house party with you when we were freshmen in college," I responded, referring one of our most amusing recollections of freshmen year at the prairie-town school, the University of Minnesota, Morris.

Picture this, two girls in beige Union Bay corduroy overalls over baby blue polo shirts knocking cheerfully on the door of an upper class men house party. The going cover charge for a house party in Morris at the time was between $3-5 a cup, depending on who was throwing the party. Sometimes girls got in for free. The owner of this particular house and coordinator of this particular house party opened the door, looked us over, and after consulting with other people in the house finally decided we could come in if we paid a $10 cover charge. Bewildered, we returned to our car in the frigid early December weather of Minnesota to put our coats back on, the ones we had left in the vehicle so that we wouldn't have to worry about them while at the party, and drove on to the next location, self-esteem shaken, but not crushed.

We both laughed at the memory, and while this is a great one in the collection of fond moments in my mind, I don't know that I could quite call it my happiest memory.

Yesterday was the 4th of July. I met up with "the poker group", the families of the dads (including mine) who have played poker together since college, since they all went to the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. I went on a pontoon ride on McCarron Lake, (while visiting the Bob McCarron family), played with my adorable nephews, ate a lot of chips and salsa, drank a frozen, sugar-free margarita, played a round of bocce ball, stayed for the annual cutting of my mother's special "flag-fruit-pizza", and then politely excused myself from the group my family has spent the last 28 years with on July 4th. I told everyone I was going to watch the fireworks with friends.

I lied.

I went home and I worked on various little odd projects around my house. I walked my dog out into the balmy weather, admired the sun setting, the air so warm and thick it felt like a shawl on my shoulders, and returned to my apartment to the sound of rockets exploding the air. I didn't watch a single one.

For years, my happiest holiday after Christmas was spending the 4th of July with the poker families and playing with my "poker cousins." Jessica and Melanie were the oldest girls, almost too old for me to even fathom. Sometimes they just liked to sit with the adults, hang out and eat. Marjie was a year older than I was and sooooo cool. She read Stephen King books, and was gregarious, and magnetic, and joked with all the dads and watched sports. I was next after her, a quieter, creative girl who loved to make up the stories of what we were "playing" while we hung from our knees on the top rungs of the octagonal playground set the Voelkers had in their back yard on E. 6th St. in St. Paul, MN. Mary came after me, two years younger, a curly-brown-haired girl that would join in on any game laughing, and Sarah, who loved Buddy Holly was after her, and then Annie, who was dramatic and sweet and flirted with Nate, my brother, the sports fanatic who was next in line. After him came Tom who broke his leg one summer and survived a sailboat overturning when he was four, and then Kathy, Mary's sister, the one with golden curls who loved everything girly, and then Jim, and then my youngest brother Mark, both of whom competed in the "who's louder" competition and tormented the poker dads with water balloons and jests. I think all of us kids teased Ray about being bald mercilessly. We held mock-Olympics, water-balloon fights, piano recitals. We played seven-steps, freeze tag, water-wars, and told ghost stories. We ate cheeseballs and sat in the Voelker's basement watching Sixteen Candles and not understanding any of it. Then we'd change into jeans, put on the bug spray, pile into cars and drive to the Capitol of Minnesota, in downtown St. Paul. We'd pick out spots on the lawn of the giant domed building to watch the fireworks, back when they were free, and spread our our fuzzy plaid blankets before reapplying bug spray to our ankles and necks. When we got older, Marjie and her cousin Molly would point out the couples "having sex" on the lawn. We'd play frisbee, play more tag, and wear ourselves out until the moment a voice came over the loudspeaker singing "I'm Proud to Be an American." The show would leave little squiggly lines on my eyelids when I closed my eyes and my ears would be ringing. The littlest kids would cry and cover their ears. But I loved it. I loved the vibration in my heart, the exhalation of twilight into darkness, the white chandelier hovering closer and closer above my eyes as I lay on my back and watched black puffs of smoke float on a navy blue sky.

When we left we'd trot with our moms behind the dads who carried the youngest kids on their shoulders, above the crowd, down the streets, over the bridge, to the parking lot, where we all said our good-byes. I would lean back in the car and pretend to fall asleep on the drive back to our suburb, Fridley. When I was young my dad would carry me up the stairs.

This might be one of my happier memories.
Almost as happy, or maybe happier, were my July 4ths in my 20's.

For six years, my fiancee and then husband and I went with our college friends up to Bayfield, Wisconsin, where we took camping to a new level. The first year we grilled steaks in the Indian campground just outside of Bayfield, carried toilet paper into the woods to go to the bathroom, and took a little 14-foot sailboat out onto the water of Lake Superior. The first year it was just us and one other couple, then gradually we invited more people, and instead of taking one vehicle and a sailboat to Bayfield, we took three or four vehicles, two kayaks, a sailboat, and about four cases of Corona to Bayfield, and then to the ferry that took us to Madeline Island where we camped at a state park. The four or five couples on the ferry would toast each other with an open bottle and a lime wedge and we'd lean out onto the water and fantasize moving to this area, this little island, this escape from the world.

The weather was almost always hot, 85 or 90 degrees, and the water in the great lake was probably 50 degrees, so we would play frisbee up to our knees in the frigid water, beer in one hand, frisbee in the other. We'd set up a tent on the beach, haul down our three water vehicles, bring two or three coolers, and sometimes people would even buy drinks from us. I would bring a book I'd never read, preferring to chat, or play frisbee, or kayak around the hook of the island out to the giant rocks of the shore down the way. You could see the bottom of the lake to 20 feet and the rocks looked like giants had arranged a sort of underwater landscaping scene. Too cold for weeds, the lake was a turquoise in the shallow lip that extended about a hundred yards from the southern shore of the little island, and dark blue once you moved beyond that shelf. Again we'd go out in the little sailboat, and I thrilled to dodging the mast swinging when we would "come about." The friend that owned the sailboat taught me, almost, to sail by myself, challenging me to take the tiller and the strings the moved the sail sooner than I felt ready. We'd bring a Nalgene bottle of some horrible drink or another, usually gin and tonic, and the trip would turn into this heady adventure of water and wind and leaning this way or that, and trimming the sail to stop the luffing, and catching a breeze and flying out on the lake, water splashing up on my stomach and toes while we leaned backwards towards the blue to stop the boat from capsizing. We'd return to shore, my legs wobbling, and I'd jump out into the knee-high cold water, before walking up to the scalding hot sand, collapsing and asking for the chips.

Breakfasts were my number one sport on vacation. I would usually be the first one awake at the camp and would attempt to quietly work on the necessities, coffee being the main priority. Later, Dave would start cooking. Eggs, pancakes with peanut butter and syrup, bacon, and Paul would make bloody marys. I think I ate more at these breakfasts than I usually did in a week. Then Shannon and I might go for a run through the woods, before returning back to our group. Even with the added run, I'd still be the first one in my suit, practically dragging the rest of the team with me to the beach for our day of frisbee and relaxation. If it rained we played drinking games under the screen tent.

On the fourth, we made our way to the ferry landing, near The Burnt Down Bar and set up our folding chairs in the sand while the sun set. I took pictures of boats intersecting with a giant orange orb lowering into purple water, of pink-reflection water lapping the shore. Andy, the geology major, would describe the geological principles of each of the stones lining the shore. We filmed silly videos and said stupid things and wandered to the ice-cream shop for giant cones. I'd wear a hoody sweatshirt and lean up against my husband, or sit next to him and touch his foot with mine. Sometimes there were tense moments with him on these trips, moments where I saw a crabbier side of my husband, probably the side of an addict in withdrawal, but not during the fireworks.

The fireworks were nothing compared to the Taste of Minnesota, but the drama was greater. A crackly voice would come over the loud speaker and start reading the preamble to the Bill of Rights, then one firework would go off. Then the speaker would give us a little history about our forefathers. And another firework would go off. Music would begin and one by one fireworks were set to certain chords and crescendos. It was a very deliberate show, but the finale made up for the theatrics. It was as if the show's pyrotechnic could no longer contain himself during the charade of the Great American Firework Script and suddenly took matters into his own hands, sending up all the rest of the rockets in a streak of glory before the Madeleine Island police could haul him away riding buck on a bicycle. I'd hold Shawn's hand after the show, his long fingers, his smooth fingernails. We'd sit in the back of someone's SUV and he'd make a stupid comment, I'd roll my eyes, but be very, very happy anyway. Maybe sometimes, during the sad years, I wished one of these other men had been my husband, one less complicated, one that understood me better, but at the end of the day, Shawn and I were a team that knew each other and saw the world around us in the same way. Eventually his shoulders would be against mine, his arms around my body, hugging me at the waist.

I loved these July fourths on our little island in the middle of Lake Superior.

So last night, as the sun started to drop, and without warning it was already 8:00 at night, I suddenly couldn't be there for the fireworks. I couldn't be with my nephews when I used to watch fireworks with my husband. I couldn't be with the family of my youth when the family of my early adult years has somehow vanished like sands under a north shore wave.

There are no more trips to Madeleine Island and there will never be trips anymore like that.
There are no more fireworks at the state capitol. I am no longer watching for my brother atop my father's shoulders.

I am without tradition this Independence Day, waiting for the next phase to begin. Waiting for my next happiest moments.